


A Curse Of Petals

by TheSightlessSniper



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But then I watched 'Deadpool 2' again and was happy again, Hanahaki Disease, I was feeling vaguely angsty, Just a little bit of pot, M/M, Mike is in a lot of pain, OOC, Out of Character, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 22:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17010549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSightlessSniper/pseuds/TheSightlessSniper
Summary: "It starts with a cough."





	A Curse Of Petals

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what made me write this, but this is the first time I've written anything alluding to the fictional but angst-magnet illness that is Hanahaki disease.
> 
> (I think the translation is approximately "Flower-Spitting"? 花吐き? I'm currently trying to learn Japanese, but my actual knowledge of the language is minimal at the moment!)

When it ended, Harvey welcomed him back to the firm with open arms. Literally; the first thing that he did upon seeing Mike darkening his doorway was charge up to him and wrap him in a hug that could crush a grizzly.

The feelings that Mike had tried to take apart brick by brick take root on their old foundations again, and it doesn’t take long to realise his crush is no longer a crush.

He’s even deeper in love with Harvey than ever before.

 

It starts with a cough.

Mike assumes it’s a cold. It’s normal with an office, the air conditioning pushing everyone’s airborne germs throughout the building. Everyone gets sick at the same time, then it’s gone. He gets on with his day, thinking nothing of the petal that he brushes off his shirt as he puts his coat on to leave.

 

He’s at Harvey’s all evening, working through one of their cases. He’s been back in New York for almost a year now, coming back a mere two after leaving with Rachel. The marriage is over, and it was a relief for both of them; she had begun to feel trapped, and it had been when he had given her permission to see other men that they had realised that it just wasn’t going to work for them. The divorce was mostly amicable, but Mike didn’t imagine that they would see each other again for a while.

Harvey cooks dinner, finally having learned to cook properly as he approached fifty.

Mike grins as Harvey sets the plate in front of him. ‘Huh. I guess that old dogs can learn new tricks.’

‘And you never learned to stop barking and it’s all downhill from here.’ The teasing is lighthearted, accompanied with a smirk as they dig into food.

Mike wakes up at six, and assumes the petals on his pillow are from walking home through Central Park in the middle of spring.

 

The coughing gets worse, and this time he sees it in front of his eyes.

His hand is full of them, perfectly formed and coated in a thin layer of mucus. He reaches shakily into his mouth, pulling another that caught underneath his tongue.

He runs to the bathroom, cleaning the evidence away and staring into the mirror. Too soon to call a doctor. Maybe it will go away on its own.

 

He gets pulled into Harvey’s office at seven, a scotch immediately being pushed into his hand. ‘To kicking Stefano Adler’s ass today.’

He accepts the drink, throwing it back and savouring the burn. ‘To hard work paying off.’

‘You free tonight?’

The coughing has him almost saying no, but his heart tugs hopefully in his chest; he might get to see Harvey every day, but Mike reasons that even that doesn’t feel like enough when you’re completely in love with your best friend. He shrugs. ’I’m a little wiped out, but I can hang out for a while.’

‘I was thinking Firefly marathon and—‘ Harvey checks around the corner, before dangling a little bag of something under Mike’s nose— ‘for old time’s sake.’

An hour and a half later, Mike and Harvey are stoned and giggling on Harvey’s couch. A puff of the joint goes down the wrong way, and suddenly Mike is coughing, hacking up more petals all over his hand and sleeve.

The event sobers Harvey, sitting up and staring. ‘What the fuck?’

The sobering effect doesn’t hit him just yet. ‘I dunno, man, I did this earlier today too.’ He sniffs, wiping the contents of his hand on a tissue before scurrying off to wash his hand in the kitchen sink.

When he sits back down, Harvey’s hand lands on his forearm. ‘Mike, you should get yourself checked out…coughing up flower petals isn’t normal.’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’ It has to be nothing; no disease out there can make you cough up plants without swallowing them first. His stoned brain reasons he must have swallowed some plant seeds, and the still-sober part is too buried to argue.

Harvey drops it, but he can feel the strange looks he keeps shooting him for the rest of the night.

 

He texts Harvey to tell him he’s sick the next morning. He’s coughing too much to call.

His morning is spent over the bowl of the toilet, periodically spitting and hacking up handfuls of petals. His eyes are bloodshot, and his ribs ache from the effort to cough, but he still doesn’t call the doctor. Between the spells, he looks up the symptom and finds only one result that matches.

Well, at least now he knew that Harvey didn’t feel the same way.

Later that night, when his chest burns from the constant irritation and he’s had enough, he calls his insurance company to check his coverage. When it’s confirmed that he’s covered for the treatment for Hanahaki disease, he schedules an appointment for as soon as he can get in.

Seven days, and it would all be over.

 

He spends most of the week in bed.

Harvey visits him on day three—Friday—and brings him soup and a bottle of cough syrup. ‘Not sure if this will help much.’

He accepts it gratefully, although his heart aches as he coughs up another handful of petals into a tissue. The blossoms are beginning to turn rotten, coming out brown and chewed-up like they’ve long fallen off the tree, and he counts himself lucky the appointment is only a few days away.

Halfway through the evening, Harvey must be worried about him, because an arm slips around his shoulders and pulls him close. ‘I’m worried about you, Mike.’

‘I’ll be okay. I’ve got an appointment scheduled with my doctor next week.’

Four days to go.

 

Sunday night, Harvey comes to see him again, this time bringing things that are more fitting at a slumber party than a mature night in.

He blinks at the hot chocolate powder and the fresh brownies from the cafe two blocks down. ‘I’m not usually much of a sweet tooth, but I do love those brownies.’

‘Good, because I bought too many, and if I’m going to get fat, you’re going to do it with me.’

He doesn’t notice, even as the night draws to a close and Harvey leaves, that he hasn’t coughed since one-PM.

 

Monday rolls around, and it only registers that he’s begun to feel better when he coughs a few times in front of the mirror.

Leaning over the sink, he expects to look into the basin to see rotten petals everywhere. Instead, the white porcelain is clean, and the evidence of his cough is completely invisible against the water splatters from washing his face.

He shakes his head, confused, and wanders into the living room to grab his phone, looking up the symptoms and the treatments again.

When the result comes up the device clatters out of his hand to the floor, and his heart pounds.

 

He keeps the appointment, just in case. But when he gets into work, the first place he heads is Harvey’s office.

He smiles up at Mike as he walks in. ‘Hey, you look almost human this morning.’

‘Don’t push it. I’ve lost a lot of sleep this week.’

‘You should have taken today off to rest. I could have handled your cases.’

‘Maybe…I just sort of needed to talk to you, confidentially.’

Mike shuts the door behind him, locking the door and pulling the blinds across. One of Harvey’s eyebrows goes up, but he beckons him to the seat opposite him anyway.

He moves around the desk instead, standing next to Harvey instead and biting his lip. He shouldn’t be so scared, but the idea that at any second he might start spitting flowers across the desk again is terrifying.

Harvey turns in his seat, rising slowly until they’re face-to-face. Mike’s hand touches to his tie, running the tips of his fingers down the silk until they touch to the middle of Harvey’s chest, their eyes connected the whole time.

When Harvey makes the first move, and he melts into their first kiss, Mike’s second thought is to cancel the appointment with his doctor.

His first is whether or not Harvey’s place is closer to the office than his.

 

When Mike wakes up Tuesday morning, he’s in Harvey’s bedroom, bare under the veil of three-hundred thread-count cotton and pressed against Harvey’s chest like he might fade away if the man let go.

Lips press to his forehead. ‘I looked up your symptoms, and it made me see it.’

‘See what?’

Harvey’s hand squeezes his. ‘That if you died, I’d die with you. I’m an idiot…I’ve been denying and repressing feelings for you since…’

‘Since…?’

‘Just exactly what day in 2011 did you turn up at the Chilton and drop pot on the floor?’

Mike pushes his nose into Harvey’s neck. ‘I think I fell for you about the same time. It must have just…gotten harder to push back when I came back to New York.’

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me? Why did you marry Rachel?’

‘I did fall in love with her. It didn’t mean I wasn’t still in love with you, you were just…unobtainable. You were my boss, and the impossible catch.’ His voice takes on a serious note. ‘You could have had Donna, or Scotty, or Zoe, or anyone, but you pushed them all away. I didn’t want you to do the same to me.’ He leaves out the words that want to follow: _It would have killed me if you did that to me_. The thought the words might have been literal just a few days ago completely escapes him.

Harvey rolled them over, looking directly down at him. His mouth moved a few times, no words forming, before he finally said something. ‘I don’t want you to ever think that I’m pushing you away.’

After another passionate round of lovemaking, and a nap, Mike has a coughing fit. A few hours later, he starts sneezing profusely, and his fever is through the roof. No flowers, though. No pain, besides the burgeoning sore throat and headache; his tell-tale signs he’s caught the flu.

When Harvey leaves the room to prepare him hot honey and lemon and to get decongestants, Mike cancels the appointment, and hopes he never has to make another ever again.

 

He’s only aware that he’s not on edge anymore on a date, the exact number of which escapes him.

They’ve been together nearly a full twelve months, announcing it publicly after three, and he’d still frozen every time he’d coughed, checking his shaking hands in a panic for signs of it coming back. A false alarm when an apple-blossom had fallen into his hand had sent him into a full scale panic attack without even an inkling of a cough, and it had taken hours for Harvey to reassure him that he still loved him, and loved him more and more every day before he had been able to relax. The humiliation of that day makes him cringe when he looks back on it, but when he brings it up to Harvey, he simply holds him in his arms and kisses him until he calms.

It’s the first time he coughs and doesn’t check his hand that he stops dead in the middle of the street, almost causing someone behind him to bump straight into them.

Harvey turns, touching his cheek. ‘You feeling okay?’

‘Yeah, just…never mind.’

The serene look on his face seems to put Harvey at ease. They start walking again, fingers finding each other and linking together as they head across the street and into the restaurant.

 

A few hours later, Mike and Harvey leave their table hand in hand, and a ring glinting brightly on Mike’s finger. And this time, when a flower falls into his open palm as they wander through Central Park to home, Mike simply smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is wondering why Mike only started getting the disease a while after getting back to New York, I have written the trope in a way that worked for me: Mike's feelings for Harvey grow until he is well and truly, irrevocably head-over-heels in love with him, and there's no turning back. And that's when the disease sets in. Meanwhile...Harvey is just so good at denying his feelings that he has himself convinced that he's just good friends with Mike up until the end.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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